Computers are utilized in personal, business, governmental, and other spheres of life for a variety of purposes and situations, including those that relate to finances, entertainment, accounting, commercial transactions, legal interactions, social programs, military projects, and so forth. For any of these purposes and situations, restricted access and operational limitations may be desirable to maintain secrecy and/or to establish secure constraints on the availability of actions that may be performed using these computers.
Traditional computer security paradigms entail linking critical or sensitive actions to those entities that are authorized to perform those actions by way of an associated privilege level. For example, a person wishing to use a computer to access information and/or to perform actions typically logs in to the computer with an identifier and a password or smartcard. After successfully logging in, the computer uses the login information to establish what rights the person has based on the login information.
Once logged in, the person can attempt to utilize any rights that might be available from that computer. For example, if the person's login information indicates that the person has a right to perform an action, then the computer grants the person the ability to perform that action. However, if the person's login information and any pre-existing authorization rules associated therewith do not indicate that the person has such rights, then the computer denies the person the ability to perform that action.
Unfortunately, the computer lacks any knowledge on what person and/or which procedure is capable of authorizing the performance of a given action. The computer therefore does not and can not provide the requesting person with any help with respect to pursuing the right or ability to perform the requested action. Consequently, the person is completely barred from legitimately having the computer perform the action.
Accordingly, there is a need for schemes and/or techniques for enabling the performance of actions in a secure environment even when the would-be performer is unaware of the privilege or privileges that are required to perform the actions.